With the spread of the Internet, the Internet infiltrates into people's lives, and at the same time negative factors such as damages caused by inappropriate information or computer viruses increase. In particular, a reduction in productivity and the problem of security management resulting from personal use of the Internet in enterprises are beginning to be pointed out in recent years. Examples are inappropriate access to Web sites during work time and an information leak by mail from inside companies to the outside. Also, in schools and the like, it is becoming necessary to limit Internet access, e.g., conceal harmful information on WWW (World Wide Web) from students or block unsolicited bulk mail and spam mail.
To solve such problems, techniques which limit Internet access by Internet filtering, i.e., software, conventionally exist. Representative techniques are a URL (Unique Resource Locator) check method and a rating/filtering method. In the former method, a URL list indicating permission or rejection of access to each URL is formed, and a URL requested by a user is compared with the URLs in the list, thereby controlling access to resources. In the latter method, Web pages are rated in accordance with predetermined standards, and access is controlled with reference to the result of rating.
Unfortunately, both the conventional techniques control access at a terminal which uses the Internet, i.e., perform the control by using URLs and external resources regardless of a user who uses the Internet.
Accordingly, it is impossible to control access for each user who uses the terminal or for each application, and set details of this access control.